Dancing with the Devil -- My two weeks with Vista RC1

Background:
Ok so I would not call myself a windows guy or a mac guy or a linux guy. Why??? Because I have to use all of these OS's throughout my day and I see strengths and weaknesses in all of them. I do however favor and feel most comfortable in a windows environment simply b/c that is where I spend most of my computing time.

The Challenge:
Install Vista RC1 (MS's long awaited new OS) on my laptop and take it for a spin

SO I have a laptop. I love this little piece of hardware. Its an Averatec and its amazing. What do I love so much about it. Its tiny! SO the basic specs are Intel Centrino proc at 1.2ghz 512mb ram and 80 gig hard drive. SO its not a screamer but its no slouch either.

The install:
RC1 took a surprisingly long time to install. Close to 2.5 hours. This really made me cringe and remember the old days of installing win 98. while the install was not difficult like win 98 could be it just took forever. However this could be attributed to the close to 2.5 gig install dvd that I created. How does that compare to XP you might ask? XP is a scrawny 500 mb install. SO with Vista your getting 4x's more Microsoft!!!!!

The experience:
With vista freshly installed I was really quite excited. I am considered a windows guy by my mac friends and have taken quite a bit of heat with the fact that xp has had no successor in well, far too long a time. SO I booted my little chiyo chan up and waited, and waited, and waited some more. I couldn't believe how long it took to boot but I guess that goes along with an os install that takes 2.5 gigs of space. OK so now its up. Now were cooking gravy without the lumps! At first glance Vista does look very nice. Very polished and shiny. However I'm not one for pretty looks or cute animations. I'm a user who prefers performance and features over well, eye candy. I started to navigate around and found some interesting features that I have to say I liked. In the control panel area Vista includes a ton of really good apps to show you whats going on with your pc and to help diagnose any issues. I really did like these and saw one that I found interesting. I forget the name of it but it basically assesses your system and gives it a vista experience score. It checks several things like processor, RAM, Video card, and what not and takes the lowest of these and thats your score. My laptop scored a 1. This is the first big indicator for me that Vista is not only going to be a pain (more later) but its going to force your hand into getting new hardware. However my laptop is less than a year old and flys! with xp. SO my first thought was whats the point of this score? Is it merely there to mock me? However bill thought I might ask this question and put a handy little link under the score that says "what does this score mean" I clicked on the link and was horrified by the answer. It basically came down to this. Microsoft will start scoring software based on minimum specs and will use this to "help" the average consumer choose software for their system. Example. I want to buy Halo 3 for vista. Hmm it says it requires a Vista experience score of 9.5 and my computer only has a 4. I guess I cant buy it. I see the flip side on a tech support line going something like this. " SO your running outlook in vista and you cant send messages. Whats your vista experience score. 3. hmm theres your problem outlook requires a 4 clickkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. SO yeah that makes me cringe again.

SO Ive done a lot of bashing but what did I like? Oh wait theres more bashing!

Ram. Simply put Vista is a RAM hog. This was one of the first things I checked as I feel xp is horrible at managing memory and allowing processes to go into a zombie state and just leave chunks of memory in use that should be free. I had high hopes for vista and memory management. What did I find. Vista freaking took it all! I think the OS required around 250-300 mg of ram to run and then vista cached the rest of it. Thats right vista took it all. All my memory to hold onto and do with as it pleased. I really did not like that and it did not inspire warm fuzzies.

Ok so really what did I like. Well vista comes standard with IE7!! now you can have a browser that supports a cool new feature called tabs!!!! Oh and it also comes with Win Media 11 the better more stable less wonky version of win media. Some other features I liked were explorer has been improved and has some automated features that makes navigating a bit easier or and quite possibly the biggest surprise to me was that they have not only held onto the command prompt (which I was wondering if they would ditch it) but they actually improved it! I couldn't believe it but it now has tab auto completion on commands and directory trees!

The final Verdict:
I'm super duper not impressed.

Explanation:
For being the next version of windows I feel that its minimum specs are a bit too bloated. I dont think I have ever had a video card that would qualify for vistas minimum and I see this only driving the price of the average consumer pc up. I cant imagine what it would take to get a good score in vista but It seems to me it would be a high end gaming rig and those are usually in the 3-4 thousand dollar range. This is not an OS for the people, its an OS for the elite. I guess MS logic is that since they only come out with a new version every what 5 years that they need to make sure it doesn't have hardware to support it for a few years and that when hardware is finally coming out thats affordable and that runs the OS well they can release their new version and screw everyone all over again. Ok Ok I know I have not really even touched on what I thought of running it on a day to day basis. I would like to make a note that I ran the vista upgrade advisor and my laptop passed. Like I said its not blazing but its no slouch either. SO vista gave me the OK to install. Boot ups were a nightmare and reminded me of 98 with 5 min+ boot up times. Shutdowns were the same way and I just cant understand why it takes so long to kill processes and shut a computer down. Granted I realize if had a better score say a 5 or 6 these could be dramatically better.

I do have 2 major gripes.

1.) Windows defender. I found no way to turn this off (realize I didnt spend that much time with it) Windows defender is the ultimate in protect your computer from anything even windows programs. It was about as ridiculous as this. start - programs - games - solitaire DEFENDER comes to the rescue informing you that solitaire is an executable and could damage your machine. Did I really intend to open this potentially malicious software! Seriously it pops up whenever you try to do anything and it got old real fast.

2.) my second gripe and what led to the downfall of vista on my little chiyo chan (I'm re-installing xp as I type this) was that it kept crashing. Anytime I would open an app it would die within 4 seconds of it opening. My laptop became completely unusable. Thats right the OS remained stable (whatever) but I could not open any apps. RUBBISH!

Final Thoughts:
Get excited kids because windows vista is coming and it finally includes lots of great software and features that you have loved in other competitors software and operating systems for the past 5 years!

Cheers!